


Disremember

by slipsthrufingers



Category: Push (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Memories are important, Some saucy language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:13:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipsthrufingers/pseuds/slipsthrufingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you going to make me forget everything that’s happened?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disremember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamiflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/gifts).



> Any errors are my own! The Russian was googled, so if that's wrong, I'm sorry. The Chinese was provided by heywilma, who also lent her spectacular betaing services to make this not completely bad. Thanks also must go to yabamena for glorious assistance in workshopping this bad boy.
> 
> Merry Christmas! I hope you enjoy :D

**“Are you going to make me forget everything that’s happened?”**

 

The tell-tale mechanical rumble of the garbage truck wakes him with a start, as though someone has jabbed an adrenaline needle through his sternum.

“ _Shit_!” He cries, vaulting across out of the bed and leaving all sleepy thoughts of blondes doing inappropriate things behind with his pillow.

He reaches the garage and the full trash can just as he sees through the side window the truck returning the neighbour’s bin to the curb.

“Fuuuck fuck fuck,” He mutters, fumbling with the key to unlock the dodgy garage door. It’s times like this he wishes he was more organised and had more self-disciplined. Or at least organised enough to remember to do shit like this the night before. He’d already forgotten to do it last week, and he’d had been assaulted with the vomit inducing scent each time he walked near the garage. But if the powers that be are choosing to let him continue to be a lazy, disorganised no-hoper, then the least they can do is give him an extra set of hands so he can fix his mistakes more efficiently.

Finally the garage door gives way and he yanks it up high enough to drag out the nasty bin. He manoeuvres it towards the curb, doing his best to keep his face as far away from the putrid rotting smells as possible, but the only way he’s going to get it there in time is if he actually bites the bullet and carries the goddamn thing all the way there. Which means it ends up being a lot closer to his face than he really wants it to be and he’s glad he can have a shower as soon as this shit is done.

He gets the bin to the curb in time and the garbage man gives him the stink eye, as if saying _again, buddy?_. He’s sure that they’ll be five minutes earlier on their run next week just to catch him out. But today the sanitation workers are professionals, and they make quick work of his trash, and seconds later his bin is returned to him, empty save for the soggy bin-drippings that come from not being emptied two weeks in a row. He’ll wash it out before he drags it back inside, or he’ll pay for it later.

Now that the stress of the moment is over, he steps away from the putrescence of his wakeup call and takes a moment to breathe in the fresh morning air. It’s a nice morning out, a few clouds in the sky, and it’s a bit chilly when all he has on is his threadbare boxer shorts, but moments like this where he actually has time to appreciate the peace and quiet of this life he leads. If the biggest stressful moment he has all week is forgetting to put the trash out, then yeah, it’s a pretty good life. 

He stretches out a kink in his neck and casually goes over to check the mailbox. If he’s out here, he might as well bring it in with the rest of his stuff and save himself the trip later. He’ll have a bit more time in the shower as well, before he needs to leave for work.

There isn’t much. A bill or two, a letter from an alumni association and some junk mail. He’s about to toss the junk in the trash to avoid the temptation of bringing any of it into the house when he sees a postcard stuck in between the Walgreens catalogue and a flyer for carpet cleaning.

The picture is a simple city-scape at sunset. From the architecture he’d guess it’s an Asian city, though admittedly that doesn’t narrow it down much. It does look familiar though, like he’d seen someone post a selfie on Facebook with that skyline in the background. He flips it over, trying to remember which of his friends had been overseas lately, when he reads the message.

Nick, Stuart is a lie. Be at 4th and Sunset. 4pm. Bring a change of clothes. 

_Stuart is a lie_? What does that even _mean_? Then there’s the message itself: could it sound more crazy if it tried? Who would honestly follow those instructions? It’s probably a dumb prank the guys at work dreamed up. And yet… the handwriting is familiar, but whoever it belongs to is just beyond the edges of his memory. He has this strange gut feeling, like the evil twin of deja vu, that if he doesn’t follow these instructions then something terrible will happen and it’ll all be his fault.

He drags the bin back around to the side of the house where there is a hose he can use to rinse the smelly thing out with. Then he heads back inside and dumps the fistful of bills and letters on his coffee table, but slips the weirdo postcard into the back of his shorts. 

It’s just a dumb postcard, probably sent to the wrong address, but it might give the guys at work something to laugh about at lunch time.

***

But Stuart keeps himself busy all day, putting off his lunch break later and later so he can finish up his to-do list in record time, until his boss knocks on his cubicle wall and tells him that if he doesn’t take his break now he’s not getting one at all, and _no_ he won’t be paid for that extra half hour of work. The boss continues to ramble on and on about workplace health and safety regulations, and about the importance of regular breaks throughout the day, so in order to avoid hearing more of the lecture he grabs his backpack and takes a shortcut through accounting to get to the elevator.

He doesn’t even remember making any kind of decisions. He just had a really strong urge to get mie goreng and vaguely recalled seeing some kind of noodle bar near the locksmiths. It’s then that he realises he’s casually walked three blocks down to the corner of 4th and Sunset. His watch tells him it’s 3:57pm, and he is sure that he hadn’t made any kind of conscious decision to get here. 

It’s then he realises what a dismal failure he’s been at keeping his resolution to forget the postcard. He'd had every intention of throwing the thing away, but he realises it's been burning a hole in his pocket and on his memory all day. Even if he'd lost it, thee message itself is a burning brand on his memory. He knows the only way to let it go is to let it play out. If it’s a prank, it’s a prank, no harm no foul. But…

3:59, the traffic lights switch, and pedestrians swarm into the intersection, bustling and pushing past one another so they can get to their destinations, no care given to who they may be bustling and pushing to get there. He sees a businessman with a large suitcase knock a woman with a bag of groceries, sending apples and cans toppling out of the bag and onto the bitumen. The businessman spares her a glance and an _oh well_ shrug, but clearly has more important places to be, and he continues on across the street. The woman bends over, and grabs what she can, quickly shoving as much back into the bag before the lights change. Another younger girl is the only one who stops to help, fetching a few stray cans of soup and a box of cornflakes. Soon they’re the only two left on the road, and that is when he sees it.

Or rather, he hears it.

The garbage truck, with its tell-tale mechanical rumble, heralds its imminent arrival from around the corner. The lights turn green, but there is no way the driver would know those two ladies were still in the intersection, and they must be running late on their route because they don’t slow down much to take the corner.

“No!” He cries, and lifts his hands up as though he could reach through the air and pluck the women out of harms way.

The truck careens around the corner and then as though defying the laws of physics, it slides across the lanes, the metal of the truck groans painfully and for a few seconds it’s as though time stops completely. His heart stops beating. He stops breathing. He stops…

But the truck misses them. The woman with the bag of groceries darts off the road like a frightened rabbit, and the girl who’d stopped to help her stands up tall. Her hair is not blonde, but has two bright pink streaks artfully poking out from out of the messy yellow waves. Inexplicably she looks towards him and their eyes lock.

His heart starts to beat again. He breathes easy. _There_.

He steps forward.

Neither of them see the taxi.

***

He wakes slowly, pushing through a fog of nausea, concussion and eyelashes to the sterile bright fluorescent lights of a hospital room.

The girl with the pink hair is sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed, rifling through his backpack. She glances up and sees that he is awake. “I told you to bring a change of clothes,” she says, delivering the perfect mix of condescension and something much kinder.

His throat is dry and his head is pounding. His left side feels suspiciously absent. “What--” He begins, but pink-haired girl cuts him off.

“It’s a concussion, and you’ve got a bruised hip so you’ll need to leave the bedroom acrobatics to the professionals for a few weeks, but other than that you’ll live. I’m Cassie. You’re Nick. And we need to check you out as soon as you feel up to walking and not puking.” She says this all very quickly, and he’s not sure how she expects him to process any of it.

“My name’s not Nick.” He finally settles on the part of the speech he feels the most confident in being able to refute. He has a drivers licence to prove it and everything.

Cassie shrugs and pushes the backpack to one side. She turns instead to rummaging through her own messenger bag hanging across her shoulders. “Fine. Technically it’s Nicholas, but I’m not even sure your mum ever called you that.” She pulls a black paper art book from the bag and a few paint pens, and pulls her heavily booted feet up onto the bed. “And never, in any time or place, have you ever gone by the name Stuart. A guy with a name like ‘Stuart’ sells funeral insurance. Which you definitely don’t do.”

“I sell life insurance.”

“Are you kidding me? Maybe I’m better than this than I thought I was.”

This is beyond ridiculous now. This personified sugar-high of a person must be a figment of his imagination, and clearly quite a destructive one if she is determined to convince him that he doesn’t exist. That if he does exist, he’d definitely be a pathetic loser. And if his own psyche is insulting him, it’s definitely time he called in a professional: “Where is the doctor?”

“Tending to more critical patients than yourself. You have a concussion and a bruise, crybaby.”

“I’m pretty sure I have schizophrenia, because a crazy pink-haired twelve year-old girl is telling me I don’t exist.”

Cassie narrows her eyes.

“Ow! Fuck! Why did you pinch me?”

“I’m not a twelve, I’m nineteen and I’m real, you idiot.” She unfurls her legs and hoists herself off the end of the bed. “You’ve known me since I was fourteen, but someone made you forget.”

“You realise how crazy this sounds, right?” He asks, and props himself up in the bed despite the nausea. 

Cassie does not seem particularly bothered by how crazy she sounds, and is now flicking through page after page of the black art book. He can see she has used the bright paint pens on every page, though she moves too quickly through them for him to get a good glimpse of any of the drawings. Finally she reaches a page near the back where a photograph has been glued onto the page. She thrusts it into his hands. “We’ve seen worse,” she says.

The photograph is of the two of them, though both are much younger. He has hair too closely cropped and some unfortunate facial hair. Younger him has a protective arm slung across her shoulder, and they are standing in front of an old-fashioned carousel, like the one they have in Central Park. They’re both smiling, and they’re both throwing up ironic peace signs to the photographer. 

“What is this?” he asks, running a finger across the edge of the photo. He looks for any kind of pixelation or an odd trick of the light that would indicate any kind of manipulation software has been used, but he can’t see any. Instead the tiny details look perfect: his jeans frayed above the knee, his old watch. There are matching bruises on each of their wrists, dark purple and painful looking, and while he remembers that pair of jeans and that watch, he’s not sure he’s ever seen a carousel in real life. There are parts to this that he can’t reconcile.

“We’d escaped from Division the day before and managed to skip town with the circus.”

“Division… what?”

“Wow,” Cassie says, raising her eyebrows. “She really did a number on you, didn’t she?” She snatches the book and the photograph back from him and flicks to a different page. “Okay, crash course time. People all around the world, people like you and me, we’re born with talents. I can see the future.” She shows him a crude picture of his house, then flicks to the next page, which shows the garbage truck and a comically over-stuffed mailbox. She flicks to the next page, where the message he received in the mail this morning is copied down exactly.

“I had that vision of the postcard and it’s the first time in three years I’ve been able to pinpoint your location.” She jabs a finger at the address-- his address-- written on the side.

She continues flicking the pages. The intersection. The woman with the basket of groceries. The garbage truck. And then them, sitting together on the hospital bed, with a cartoon pink haired girl showing him a photograph of a carousel.

“So you’re a stalker, too?” He asks, and she rolls her eyes. 

“I’d forgotten how dumb you can be sometimes. I didn’t miss that.”

She flips to the next page, which shows a rather sinister looking nurse holding a syringe. “We need to leave before she gets here. She doesn’t work for the hospital. Can you walk yet?”

A rolling wave of nausea rumbled through him and the pounding in his head intensified. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says stubbornly, closing his eyes and pressing the heel of his palm into his temple. If the nurse didn’t come in soon to get rid of this girl, he’d call her first.

“You are, Nick. You just need to trust me.”

He was angry now. In pain, and angry. “Why should I trust you? None of what you’ve told me makes any sense, and you haven’t given me a single bit of evidence I can believe.” 

By the time he finishes, he realises he is yelling, and Cassie’s expression turns from one of a sort of fond annoyance to one that looks … well… scared. Her eyes dart around the room, avoiding all eye contact. He hears the steady clack of footsteps outside the privacy curtain that is waving lightly as though a breeze just ruffled them.

“We’re too late.” She says, sighing and hops off the bed. She shoves the notebook back in her bag, deep down. “Guess it’s Plan B then.”

“What’s plan --?” He begins, but she shushes him with a forceful finger to her lips and a very severe look. Her other hand is digging in the bag for something else.

“I can see the future, but I never told you what you can do.” She whispers harshly, pulling out a taser which she immediately hides behind her, and she sidles up to the curtain. “They’ve made you forget, but they can only mess with your mind. Your body still knows how.”

“What?”

“You can--”

She is cut off by the nurse opening the curtain and stepping inside. “You’re awake,” The woman says, wrinkled hands immediately fetching the chart at the end of the bed to flick through. “Good.”

He doesn’t think that Cassie has done her justice. She looks… well… nursey. A bit pudgy around the middle and greying around the temples, but there is nothing overwhelmingly menacing about her. 

But that only lasts long enough for her to realise she’s not the only person here with him. 

Cassie had somehow managed to go unnoted for a few seconds, becoming somewhat of a wallflower against the inoffensive blue fabric. But when the nurse glances up and makes eye contact with the teen, her whole demeanor changes from a slightly busy matron to someone completely different altogether. Someone much more like Cassie’s drawing.

The syringe that Cassie drew appears from a fold in the woman’s clothing, and she pounces on Cassie, pointing the needle directly at the jugular. Cassie dodges, albeit narrowly, and in the pursuing scuffle she manages to disarm the nurse, and the needle clatters to the ground. The taser is drawn, and fired, but it misses, and then the nurse gets a capable hand around Cassie’s neck.

And that’s when it gets really weird.

He expects the nurse to squeeze, to simply throttle the girl, but for all he can see her grip is deceptively light. But Cassie’s skin begins to ripple and she lets out a bone-chilling, hair-raising scream. It’s the scream of someone who is in agonising, paralysing pain.

And then the flesh on her face splits open. There is a series of wounds that look like deep claw marks that split her cheek. Dark black bruises blossom on both of her wrists. Cassie reaches out to him, eyes wide and _begging_ for help, and he sees the bone in her forearm twist unnaturally.

“No!” He cries, and again his hand comes up as though he could push the women apart from meters away.

The nurse is thrown across the room where her head hits a defibrillator with a sickening crunch, and Cassie falls to the floor. 

“See,” she says, blood oozing thickly from the gashes in her face. “I knew they couldn’t Push it all down.”

Nick frantically pushes the papery sheets off him and stumbles out of the bed. “Are you alright?” He asks, still confused beyond belief. He manages to help her up into a sitting position. Up close, her face looks even more ghastly.

“No, but we need to get out of here. Like I’ve been telling you.” She coughs, and tries to grab his arm to stand, but she seems to be having trouble gripping things. He grabs her under the arms and hoists her up. “She won’t be alone.”

This whole situation is just the cherry on top of the most confusing, unexplainable day of his life. She wobbles against him a little, and while his head is still pounding and he is pretty sure that if he tries to go any faster than a zombie-like stagger he will lose any meals he’d had in the last week, he finds that he _wants_ to do what she says. 

“Okay,” he says. “How do we get out of here?”

***

Somehow they get out of the hospital without anyone asking questions. This is especially remarkable when one considers that he’s still dressed in a hospital gown (“I _did_ tell you to bring a change of clothes-- that one is all on you.”) and she is bleeding profusely and _leaving_ the hospital, rather than entering it. But they manage to swipe some gauze to stem the flow, and once he finds a spare pair of scrubs from an empty doctor’s lounge he becomes a little less preoccupied with the fresh breeze and has a bit more time to think.

Nick mostly follows Cassie’s directions, because in for a penny, right? She directs them through rarely used corridors and down forgotten stairwells until they are out in an alleyway that is hidden from the normal public access to the hospital. “Did I really do that back there?” He asks, slipping an arm around her shoulders so that he can support her as they shuffle down the street.

“You mean knock Nurse Ratchett into Ward C?” Cassie asks, pointing to a cab across the street.

“Yeah.” He waits a few moments for a gap in the traffic, then leads her across, because by now she is leaning heavily into him.

“You’re called a Mover. You can move stuff with your mind.”

“And what was she?”

“A Stitch. They’re healers, but the good ones have a rewind button. Thus the unravelling you see before you.” She gestures to her cheek with her good arm and tries to smile weakly.

Nick flags the taxi down, and when it stops next to them he opens the door and slides Cassie in as gently as he can manage. She grimaces, but once he settles in beside her she twists and lies across the seat, comfortably resting her head in his lap. She does it so naturally, and he unconsciously accommodates the seating arrangement by adjusting the position of his legs, that he can’t help but wonder whether they’ve been in this position before. Cassie looks about as utterly exhausted as he feels. She looks so vulnerable and trusting but he hardens against that; he still wants his answers.

He rattles off his address to the driver, then looks down at her. “You rest. When we’re home, we’ll talk.”

She falls asleep almost instantly, and if anything she looks even younger in sleep. The abuse inflicted by the Stitch looks even more brutal and horrific against her pale skin. This girl might be crazy, and she might be weaving some complex, horrible story as some kind of con to trick him into... something. But what that nurse did to her was not natural, and whether he understands it or not, he didn't really need Cassie to confirm what he'd seen. He'd known it was him as soon as he stretched out his hand.

 _“You’re called a Mover. You can move stuff with your mind.”_ Cassie's words echo through his mind on a loop. What are the extent of his powers? Can he only use them when he's emotionally compromised or stressed? Is it only big stuff? How long has he been able to do this? Why would anyone make him forget? Or change his name, for that matter?

The questions rumble through his brain like a freight train, and it doesn't do any favours for his pounding headache. He glances up at the driver, who seems preoccupied enough with negotiating highway traffic, and he extends his free hand to stretch his fingers. How does he even start? Is there some muscle he exceeds to flex to trigger it? Is it all in his brain?

He fixates on a pen lid he can see on the floor of the taxi. It's small and light and surely if he can throw a middle aged woman across the room he can push a pen lid. He stares at the lid. It's a blue cap, probably from a cheap ballpoint pen, the kind they affix to chains at the bank. The tip of it looks a little worn, as though the owner had worried it with their teeth a little before accidentally abandoning it to the floor of this cab.

 _Move_ , he thinks, willing the thing, picturing it rolling over in his mind.

Nothing.

 _Move._ He is more forceful this time, and he points his fingers at the lid. 

Still nothing.

 _Move._

But the pen stays still.

Cassie stirs a little in his lap so he glances down at her. The muscles in her face are twitching, and behind her eyelids her eyes are moving wildly. Bad dream, he figures, and she whimpers a little as if confirming his theory.

"Cassie," he says quietly, and gently grips her shoulder to wake her. "Cassie, it's just a dream," he says, a little louder.

She slowly comes to. The muscles in her face let go, and her eyelashes whisper open, softly. Once she sees his face above hers she closes her eyes again, reassured, and almost instantly she is asleep again.

He wonders what her life has been like, what their life was like, back before he was made to forget. She has said it's been three years since she'd last seen him, which would've made her 16 and him 30. That's a strange relationship, no matter which way he looks at it. And then there is this ominous "Division" that is chasing them. He doesn't know much about them, but from the way that nurse attacked so readily, he knows they're not the sort of people to sit you down and treat you nicely. If he _can_ move things with his mind and she _can_ see the future, he could imagine all the different people who'd be out there and ready to exploit them. 

If he was in that situation, he'd want a partner at his back, someone he could trust to look out for him. And if his partner was a sixteen year old girl, he'd want to protect her. She could see what danger was coming and he could Move it aside. It might be an unconventional partnership, but he could see how it would work.

He could see how distraught he'd be if he lost that partner. It's not a big stretch of the imagination to picture the panic in his eyes if this girl he'd been protecting and watching out for for years disappeared from his protection. And if he reverses those positions: if he was a young psychic who'd lost his friend, with no idea where he'd gone, no visions to help, no clue for years, and on top of that having to fend himself against this ominous Division group without help for the first time in years...

It's then he realises how hard his heart is thumping in his chest; his fists are clenched and he is grinding his teeth. He forces his eyes to look away from the teenager sleeping in his lap, and they catch upon the pen lid again.

It shoots off like a rocket and slams into the door.

Huh.

The taxi slows, turning into a familiar street. So much has happened today that Nick finds it hard to believe that it was only this morning he had dragged the bin out Then again, he's not sure he's the same person now that he was then.

Cassie stirs again, but this time she wakes completely, pushing herself up out of his lap with her good arm. She pushes her messenger bag into his hands and says, "Get the money out?"

It's a little weird, looking through her bag, but he finds the purse straight away, sequestered in a side pocket. He gives the driver the cash and helps Cassie out of the car. Her wrist is swollen painfully and the gauze on her face is beginning to soak through. Nick holds her steady and guides her up the front steps but he is forced to pause when he reaches his door. His keys were in his backpack which he left at work. His wallet is presumably somewhere at the hospital, along with the rest of his clothes.

"Open the door, Nick." Cassie says, wearily. He knows she doesn't mean with a spare key.

"I don't really remember how," Nick says, and he means it. Despite the wrist and her face, she does look a little better after her rest in the car, but she will need proper medical care before she can be back to looking like the perky effervescent teenager who accosted him in the hospital.

"Yes you do," she says. "You've been able to do it since before you could walk. No amount of Pushing or Wiping can get rid of something that instinctual. It'd be like convincing you you've never breathed."

"It's not that simple." He shakes his head.

Cassie sighs sadly. "I trust you and I know you can do this. You did it in the street, you did it at the hospital, you did it in the cab. You can do it now."

"You were awake?" He asks, a little surprised.

She shakes her head carefully. "No, but I saw you do it. Normally I'd draw it, but I've been a bit preoccupied this afternoon... and..." She lifts her wrist limply, and then brings it back to hold against her chest.

Nick nods, though it is more to himself than her. He did the pen lid, and opening a door should be as easy as pie compared to vaulting a person across the room. He touches the cool metal of the lock and focuses his gaze on the keyhole.

"Just Move it," Cassie says, encouragement colouring her tone like a mother teaching a child to walk.

And it's like something just clicks in his brain. He feels the tumblers with his mind, and he aligns them together with subtle movements and... _click_. The door swings open.

Nick turns to her, a child seeking praise and love from the doting parent. Cassie smiles, and he helps her inside, locking the door behind them.

***

As he dresses her wounds, she explains everything he's missing as best she can. 

She tells him about Specials. About Movers and Watchers and Stitches and Pushers and Bleeders and Porters and all the others in between.

She tells him about her mom and his dad.

She tells him about Division.

She tells him about the experiments, the serums, the torture that Division deals in, all in the name of science.

She tells him about how they met in Hong Kong.

And then she tells him about Kira.

"You were always convinced she'd figure it out eventually and escape," she explains, carefully adjusting the collar of the clean shirt that he'd found for her so it doesn't press on her abused neck.

Nick sits awkwardly down on the coffee table directly across from Cassie, and tries his best to believe it.

"We laid low together for about a year before I was able to see anything about her. We got to Boulder just in time to help get her out, but she wasn't the same as she used to be."

Cassie pauses in her tale, as though searching around to find the right words. This day has already been an information overload for him. She goes on, but this time she sounds almost philosophical. "I think there's a reason our skills develop over time, that way our brains don't have to cope with anything we're not capable of processing. She might've been the only one to survive the serum, but I'm not sure that meant she came out unscathed." 

"What do you mean?"

"She was okay for a bit, I suppose. You were both happy to be reunited, you didn't see it for a while. But she was emotional. Like a manic depressive on crack. And she was angry at Division for what they did to her, and to you. She led a few really successful raids, and we even managed to break out my mother from the San Francisco detainment centre, but... mom wasn't well. And we couldn't keep running and looking after her at the same time. Mom couldn't keep up and she'd been stuck in Division for five years at that stage. I wanted to find somewhere to hide out, and you were gonna help. I think you liked the idea of settling down for a while. But Kira didn't want to stop. And I don't think she could. She couldn't go more than a day without using her powers on someone. It was just little things at first, Pushing waiters to get served quickly at restaurants. Making cleaners forget get they'd seen us and if we had to stop and settle down and hide, probably for a few years, that'd mean no powers, no nothing."

Again, the teenager pauses in her story, though now she looks a little more pale, a little more queasy.

"You and me agreed that I'd take my mom to this place one of your contacts suggested, a little town called Prospect in the Ozarks, and that you and Kira would draw attention away from us by causing a distraction as far away as you could manage, then work your way back to me, but..."

She leans across him and retrieves the black notebook from her bag once more. Again, she flicks through the pages at the back, past the photograph of the two of them, until she gets to a newspaper article that's been clipped from the Toronto Star and glued to a new page. She holds it out for him to read.

**One Killed, Two Injured in Warehouse Fire**

_Authorities are still unsure how a warehouse fire began last Saturday night that resulted in the death of a security guard...._

He reads quietly, and when he finishes she says, "That was a Division facility. From what I've found out, you attacked it together but something went wrong, and that's where I lost you. Kira too."

Nick eyes the date. "This says it was three years ago."

She nods. "I couldn't track you down. I used to have a good lock on you and the decisions you made would help me keep track of you when you weren't around, but all of a sudden it was like you'd just been... dampened. I knew you weren't dead, but I had no idea where you were, and with mom the way she was I couldn't leave her to track you down."

Cassie leans across and flips the pages of the notebook, past the photograph she shared with them earlier, to a photo of him, looking as young as the first, but this time standing with his arm firmly around the shoulders of a young brunette girl. His face is pressed into her temple, and his eyes are closed. He looks happy.

"That's Kira," Cassie says. "I can't be sure, but I figure something went wrong when you were there. All I know for sure is that she died there. Division got ahold of you then, and they've been keeping an eye on you ever since."

"How come I don't remember any of this?"

She shrugs, but it’s a halting movement, as though performed despite the pain. "Maybe she Pushed you to forget, or maybe one of the Division Wipers got a hand on you, maybe both,” she says. "I can't be sure."

"Well, can I get it back?" he asks.

"I hope so. I think it'll come back eventually, but it depends on so many things," Cassie says, "and I'm pretty sure Division has been reinforcing it for a while, whether they were the ones who did it I t the first place or whether it was an accident."

"Well if Stitches can unstitch people, can Wipers unwipe?"

"Maybe. I only know of the one, and he's in Hong. Kong. But we need to get out of here soon anyway."

"Are we meeting your mom somewhere?"

"No, but Carver is gonna be here soon, and I don't like our future if we stay here and get caught." She flips back to the pages at the front. A stylised version of her is strapped down to a bed, eyes pried open by some kind of nightmarish contraption, with tubes and machines hooked into her veins. On the opposite page, he is curled up in the corner of an empty cell.

As terrifying as the drawings are, he can't help but note the avoidance of his question. "What happened to her?" He insists.

"She... she died about two months after the warehouse fire."

"So you've been alone all that time."

She nods and then they both fall silent. Nick isn't sure what to do, but if this Carver guy is anything like what Cassie haas described, then he knows they won't be able to stick around for much longer. He can pack a bag and some food. He has some money stashed away in an old biscuit tin he kept in the back of his closet. He's been saving for a motorbike, but his crappy old Toyota would do for now.

And it seems to him like the one thing that Cassie needs right now is someone else telling her what the plan is. He can't imagine how lonely and abandoned he would've felt if he was in her position: a teenager, alone, chased by a shady government department and haunted by ghastly visions of your probable imminent future demise. "You get some rest," he says, and stands up with purpose.

She frowns. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to pack stuff into our car, and then we're gonna find ourselves a Wiper. See if they can jog my memory."

"But Carver is coming."

He nods. "So we'll move quickly. And from what you say, he doesn't have a Watcher on his side at the moment, so we need to stay ahead of him while we can."

It doesn't take long for him to have a bag packed. Within half an hour they are bundled up in his car, him at the wheel and her curled up under a blanket in the back seat.

***

They get out before Carver arrives. Cassie tells him later she thinks they missed each other by about an hour. He drives as far out of town as he can on one tank of gas, and when he gets to the fuel stop he asks her where they should head first.

"Don't make decisions they can track. Just keep moving," she says. "You told me that once,"

And so that's what they do. He sticks to the highways for the first few days, just so they can get as much distance between them and anyone else who might be following them. He tries not to make any decisions about routes; just let's the road naturally dictate where he should go. He takes bypasses and bridges and tunnels without thinking about any final destinations.

After about a day and a half on the road, Cassie declares that she feels up to driving herself. He gives her the wheel, grateful for a break. She definitely looks better, with a healthier pink glow in her cheeks than the white sickly pallor that she'd had since the hospital. The bruises have faded and the gashes across her face have closed and scabbed over.

In some ways, they fall into a very natural rhythm together. Conversation comes pretty easily, which is good because for all intents and purposes he is travelling with a stranger. They talk about everything. She tells him more about Specials and Division and the clandestine history of governments throughout the last decade attempting to utilise people like them for their own purposes. But she also shares details of her life: her favourite colour is purple, but pink suits every colouring better. She has never had a formal education, but her mum taught her to read and enlisted in a campaign of self improvement using libraries and the internet and a variety of acquaintances and allies who became conscripted teachers on the side.

He discovers she is whip smart, and he can't help but conclude that if this girl had had a normal upbringing, and the opportunity to participate in normal, conventional schooling, she would be one of those kids you read about in the paper that have three college degrees by age 16.

She is a crappy artist. But despite that she still keeps them ahead of the pack.

But it's not all smooth sailing.

One day they stop at a road house for a proper meal and the chance to use showers that have plumbed in hot water, when he comes back from the toilets to see a middle aged couple slipping her a napkin with something written on it. They look like church-going folk, her in a floral print dress, and him in a dress shut and neatly pressed slacks. Both give him identical looks of distrust, but they retreat back their own booth when he approaches the table. 

"What's that?" He asks Cassie, who pushes the napkin deep into a pocket.

"Don't worry," she says, and offers him some pancakes on the end of her fork.

Later when she's napping, he manages to retrieve the napkin from her pocket without waking her. To while away the long hours driving, he'd spent more time practicing his Pushing and he could now life and move small things with ease. The napkin had a phone number a name and four simple words: "He doesn't own you."

It takes him a moment to process what that could mean, when it all clicks together, how it must look. A young girl with violent-looking wounds, travelling alone with a man much older than herself. Of course that couple would want to help her, looking as young as she is, and of course they would have nothing but disdain for him.

For a few days after that realisation, he makes a point of calling her his sister in casual conversation with clerks and other travellers they bump into. It seems to cut down on some of the death glares a little. But when they're back in the car, Cassie says bluntly, "I'm not your sister. Stop telling people that."

"Why not? It gives us a cover story, makes us less suspicious," he says, having thought of several good arguments to support his new approach.

Cassie shakes her head forcefully. "Nope. It makes people think you're lying about your real relationship with me, and it makes us more memorable to them. Instead of thinking: 'isn't that terrible! Another girl with bad taste in men.', they think: 'Who does that guy think he is, passing that girl off as his sister? I wonder what else he's lying about?' News flash: we look nothing alike."

"But with your face at the moment, it's attracting attention."

She rolls her eyes, taking them off the road to glare at him. "Do you think I have this hairstyle to blend in? It's not the normals we're hiding from. It's Division."

They drive from state to state aimlessly for a while. He keeps practicing his Pushing, and trying to Push himself to remember anything he recognises. One day he is listening to Cassie recount a memorable trip she took to a racing track, and for a moment he the rushed feeling of déjà vu. He'd heard that story before! He is about to finish off her anecdote for her, when the context flushes back to him-- she'd told him the exact same anecdote back in Nevada, when they'd passed through Vegas.

They continue their game plan of avoiding planned destinations, occasionally Cassie stops in to meet a 'friend' or a 'contact'. Usually he isn't invited to these meetings, but every now and then she suggests he comes with. They’re never people he recognises, but judging by the type of person they usually are it's understandable why she might want someone backing her up with those meets.

They continue in this fashion for a few months until one day Cassie makes him stop for a few hours in Newark. She tells him to keep himself busy and out of trouble then disappears. He practices tossing a golf ball up and down in the air without hands for a bit, then gets anxious when she's still not back by hour six.

By the time she returns to their hotel room he's pacing back and forth and making the curtains flutter in the still air. If she notices his agitation, she doesn't comment and instead drops a yellow envelope on the end of his bed.

"Happy birthday," she says tonelessly and switches on the TV, immediately switching channels to the news.

The envelope contains a passport with his face and the name Benjamin Smart, and ten thousand dollars cash.

"Where did you get this?"

"Wrong question, Mr Smart," she says, making herself comfortable by jamming a few pillows behind her head.

He pauses for a few moments. "Er... why do we need this?"

"Because I've found a Wiper. In Vladivostok."

 

***

Russia is as cold and miserable as he expects, and if he'd been here before, it’s no wonder he acquired himself a serious case of amnesia. He wants nothing more than to get out as quickly as they managed to get there (with surprising efficiency. On a cargo ship) and then forget ever setting foot in this unforgiving snow-covered city.

Cassie seems reinvigorated by the snow. For someone who seems to take pleasure wearing the shortest of short skirts, she seems to love the cold. Their contact isn't available until later on in the evening, but while he can do nothing but stress and worry about what the outcome might be, she seems determined to be happy.

She leaves him sitting alone in their hotel in the morning, declaring that there is a patch of snow in a nearby park that is begging to be fashioned into a snowman. Periodically she sends him picture updates of her progress and he resolutely stays in bed where it is warm and dry, before she is bursting back into the room and bullying him to come and see it in person.

"No, Cassie," he says for what he is sure is the fifth time. "I just want to stay in until I have to leave."

"It's not every day you get to see Vladivostok, Nick," she says, insistently.

He buries his head between a few pillows and grunts a disapproving noise. That is not a convincing argument to the Watcher, who jumps on the end of his bed and pulls at the blankets, doing her best to dig him out from the cushion fortress he's fashioned himself.

"This is ridiculous," she says, and he Pushes her off the bed without coming up for air.

It's the first time he's ever successfully used his powers on her, and it's like all of her joviality is sucked from the air by the time she's lifting herself back off the ground. It's an ominous silence, and Nick knows that his attempts to hide from her are not going to work.

"Sorry." He mumbles through the blankets, and feels her take a seat next to him on the edge of the bed.

"So I misjudged your mood, didn't I?" she says. He sighs and uncovers his head to look at her. She asks him calmly, "What's wrong?" 

For a moment he thinks about how to best explain why he'd rather just sleep the day away, why he seems to have an irrational hatred of this foreign city, why he'd Pushed her off the bed.

"You're scared of what'll happen tonight." Cassie says, before he finds the words.

He nods. "What if it doesn't work? What if I just have this.... blank part of my life?"

"It'll work." She says, firm with confidence.

"Did you see that?" He asks hopefully. She has tried to focus her visions on the outcome of her meeting, but she hasn't been able to get details.

"No," she says, but the confidence remains. "But I have a good feeling about tonight's meeting. It just feels right. And I'm due for a break."

"But what if they can't?" He says again.

"We'll worry about that if it comes to it. Right now all you're succeeding in doing is bumming me out when you could be helping me build an even bigger snowman with your God-given psychic powers instead of using them to push me off the bed."

Reluctantly he pushes himself up and she shifts to give him room. She softens a little. "We don't have to go out if you don't want, but sitting in here worrying about it isn't going to help you."

They order room service and sit together watching children's cartoons. They're poorly dubbed into Russian and Cassie does manage to distract him by mimicking butchered Russian phrases intermixed with dumb Spongebob lines.

Soon enough they're pulling boots and thick coats on and walking briskly through the dusk in subzero temperatures to get to their rendezvous point by the agreed upon time. Strangely enough, they're meeting at a community swimming pool, shut down over the winter. He unlocks the outer door with ease and they eagerly hurry inside, because although it's not heated it is relief from the biting wind. They stay huddled together and get as far inside the complex as they can. Cassie stays tucked underneath his arm.

The pool itself has been emptied, so as not to damage and crack the veneer of the pool when the change in the weather would cause the water to freeze then later break apart. The security lights are still on though, providing an eerie dim light throughout the cavernous space. It is an unsettling environment, to say the least, and Nick is already nervous enough without the environment adding to the atmosphere.

"Have you met this one before?" He asks Cassie quietly, voice barely above a whisper.

"No, but I got their name from someone I trust. You trust them too." She says, and he can tell she is trying to sound encouraging. It sounds forced to his ears.

"What time--" he begins, but footsteps from behind them cut him off. They both turn together. Standing near the men's changing room is a woman. Tall and willowy, her blonde hair is mostly tucked into a grey scarf. Her hands are gloved and shoved deep into her pockets, but she has a kind face.

"Dobryy vecher," Cassie says, doing her best to get the inflection right.

"Privyet," she replies and smiles. It's a warm smile, like she is greeting an old and dear friend. She crosses the distance between them with confident strides and then switches to heavily accented English. "I understand you need my assistance."

Cassie nods, enthusiastically and begins to explain their situation. The Wiper nods and occasionally glances over at Nick, as though examining an interesting portrait or sculpture that she is trying to interpret.

"Can you help?" Cassie finishes, her voice echoing with the trying years she's endured. Her admission this afternoon, that she felt she was due a good turn in life, is not the first time that Nick has picked up on her desperation.

"I will see," the Wiper says after a pause. She removes her gloves and shoves them into a pocket. "You," she says to Nick and points to the spectator benches that line the edge of the pool. "I need you sit there, please."

He does as requested, and takes a seat. The Wiper stands over him, and lightly touches a hand to both sides of his head, pressing gently into his temples. He glances up at her to see what she is doing, but she has her eyes closed in concentration. What can only be described as a tickling sensation begins at the back of his skull. If his brain could flinch away from a gentle caress, it would, and while it is a foreign feeling to him, it's not altogether unpleasant.

The sensation doesn't last long, maybe half a minute. Cassie hovers to their side, hands grasped tightly in front of her while she quivers in anticipation.

The Wiper removes her hands and lets out a quiet clucking noise with her tongue. "I cannot fix," she says immediately, and Nick sees Cassie deflate next to him. He reaches out and takes her hand. The Wiper is not finished. "I cannot fix, but is maybe fixable. Not by me."

Cassie squeezes his hand tightly, "Who can? Can you tell us?"

The Wiper shakes her head. "Nyet," she says. "Person who did this, can fix. Not by me."

"But I don't remember who did it to me," he says. "We don't know who it was."

"Is there any other way?" Cassie asks.

The Wiper scrunches her face up, thinking. After a while, and in halting words, she explains, "Sometimes you can fix yourself. With time the brain fix itself. I do not know why."

"So you're saying that maybe Nick will remember in his own time?"

"Maybe. Maybe no." She shrugs.

"How long will it take?"

"Tomorrow, maybe? Maybe a year. Maybe ten years. But maybe never. I'm sorry, I do not know."

The Wiper is apologetic but leaves soon after. They stand there for a bit, still holding hands, before the cold forces them to retreat back to their hotel.

***

At first he thinks it’s just disappointment, when she won't talk to him on the walk back to their hotel room. But she doesn't talk much the next day either. Soon enough it becomes a battle to get more than single syllable answers from her.

They don't stay in Russia long after that. After a bit of culling they manage to squish all their worldly belongings down into packs and they get on a bus to a China, blending in with the other backpackers. Nick makes most of the decisions, even though she's the one who's spent a significant amount of time here.

Well. She _remembers_ her time here. Apparently he used to speak passable Cantonese, and his Mandarin was good enough to get him through the basic conversations.

Now he studies the English to Chinese dictionary he picked up at the transit centre every minute he has spare. His pronunciation is atrocious, but if anything seems familiar, then maybe it'll be the nudge his brain needs to repair itself.

Of course, he doesn't really believe that. If spending a year travelling with this whip smart, amazing girl wasn't enough to give his brain the kick it needed, then a shitty dictionary isn't likely to do the deed either. But he tries anything he can think of. Cassie has worked so hard and plumbed every avenue she could think of to track down that one Wiper. To track down another, one who probably worked for Division, and after she's spent literally years looking for him...

Well... it's no wonder she's depressed.

They backpack through China avoiding the bigger cities as best they can. He doesn't really have a destination in mind, but apparently that's the safest way for him to keep off Division's radar. Keep moving, not making any decisions a Watcher could track. He's not sure his _own_ Watcher is keeping up with their movements.

"We can go back stateside, find a Sniffer we can use to search the warehouse site for clues." He suggests one day, as they walk side by side down the street, looking for somewhere to grab a bite to eat.

"I don't know any," she says, and takes a sharp left turn down an alleyway that Nick hadn't seen from the main road. 

"Well, you didn't know any Wipers and you found one."

"Yeah. In _Russia_." She says, waving a dismissive hand at him before she ducks into a dingy looking noodle bar. Nick follows her inside and takes the stool next to hers. She pulls out her notebook and pen and begins sketching a new atrocity in the pages, a curtain of pink and blonde hair blocks it from view. Even still, he doesn't bother trying to get a good look at it. She's been hiding them from him for weeks. He figures she'll show him when she's ready.

She doesn't look up when the waiter comes over to them, so Nick chooses for them. "Lai erfen liu rou tang." 

"When did you learn Mandarin?" She asks, sounding almost bored.

"From the Lonely Planet guidebook." He says, and hands her a set of disposable chopsticks. She doesn't take them, instead she keeps sketching, so he places it on the bench for her.

"Very enterprising," she murmurs. "But you pronounced beef wrong. You actually asked him for tumour soup instead."

"I've always wanted to try that." Nick says, and pauses, waiting to see if he could get even a hint of a smile from her. But she doesn't react, and keeps on drawing.

And maybe it's the hint of pink coloured paint pen he sees on the page, which he knows she only ever used to draw her hair or blood, but before he puts much thought into it he Pushes the notebook from her territorial grip into his own hands. 

That gets a reaction.

"Give it back," she says furiously, reaching to snatch it back, but he holds it out of her reach. There are some advantages to being the bigger of this partnership.

"No, I want to see." He says, and while he is forced to stand to keep it out of her grasp, he is finally able to see what it is she's been drawing.

It's herself, in every single picture. The one he's interrupted is of her by herself a street somewhere. He flicks back to the page before: Cassie crouched in a corner, alone again. The page before that has her prone in a hospital bed. On every single page of this book, she has drawn herself and only herself.

"What is this?" He asks as he flicks back. "What does this mean?"

"Give it back," she repeats again, and makes one final jump for the book, but this time he Pushes her back into her seat, and holds her firmly down.

"You'll get it back when you explain what is you're drawing. Why am I not in any of these?"

He watches the blood drain from her face, and she takes on a queasy pallor.

"Cassie," he says, his grip on the book is by now so hard that his knuckles are white. "What happens to me?"

Her face crumbles, and she begins to cry. Nick feels his stomach drop, and any desire he had for the beef or tumour soup is gone, perhaps forever. "Do I die?" He asks, forcing each word out with a choke.

But she shakes her head, "No," she says, thickly through the tears. "I don't think so."

"So why am I not in any of these?" He asks again. This seems too important for him to simply let go.

She sucks in a messy gulp of air through her nose, and snatches a napkin from the counter to blot her nose. "They're not real visions." She says, and points an accusing finger at he he book in his grip. "I just keep dreaming that."

Nick opens up the book again to a new pages, where Cassie stands alone on the bow of ship. Ominously she is standing on the wrong side of the railings. "So in this dreams, what happens to me?"

"I don't always know. Sometimes you die. Sometimes you leave. Sometimes you get tired of waiting and dealing with me and you just go." Her voice cracks and he is sure his heart breaks with it. He'd seen she was depressed, but had he known that this was what had been fretting and worrying about for all these weeks, then he might've been able to do something about it.

Well, he can do something about it now. He tosses the black notebook aside and pulls her into a bone-crushingly tight hug. She puts up no resistance, and buries her face in his chest. Her own arms wiggle their way around his waist, and for a moment or two, he just holds her.

"Cassie." He says, and he hears her make a noise, a grunt of response into his shirt, "I want you to listen very carefully. I'm not going anywhere."

She doesn't reply.

"I'm serious, Cassie. Look at me now," and he pulls away, his hands drifting up to gently caress her face and force her to keep eye contact with him. "Not going anywhere."

"But what if you never remember?" She asks so quietly that if he hadn't been inches away from her, he never would've picked it up.

"So I don't remember. We'll get over it." Nick says, and is surprised to discover that he actually means it. Sure, getting his memories back would be great, but he's not sure he needs them back as much as she does. And she seems to believe him. The colour hints back at her cheeks, and he thinks he sees the beginning of a smile. "I'm not going to leave you. So you can throw that thing away."

They leave the notebook in the noodle bar when they go.

***

They finally get to Hong Kong. They hadn't planned it, just walked and hitched their way down the east coast of China until they stand together, looking up at the skyline.

He reaches into his back pocket and from his wallet he pulls out the old, worn postcard. He holds it out to Cassie.

"Welcome to Hong Kong," it says on the front. Cassie takes it from him with a small smile.

"Welcome back," Cassie says after rereading her message to him, written almost a year ago to the day.

Nick smiles back. And then his stomach grumbles. "Let's go find something to eat. I have the weirdest craving for Nine Dragon Soy Sauce."

***


End file.
